The present invention relates generally to television systems and more particularly, to a physical device for providing program guide information to a television.
Historically, only hardcopy television program schedule guides were available. More recently, as illustrated by the Levine Patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,713, television program guides have become available in electronic form. Television program schedule guides have listed the available television programs by day of the week, time of day, channel, and program title.
The earliest versions of on-screen electronic program guides (xe2x80x9cEPGxe2x80x9d) provided for the storage of program schedule information in an electronic memory connected to the television receiver and generally provided for the on-screen formatting and display of the program schedule information on the television screen. The early EPGs typically overlaid the television programming. A network operator is often responsible for downloading the EPG data into a television.
Later EPGs provided viewer-to-EPG interaction improvements and provided Picture-In-Guide (xe2x80x9cPIGxe2x80x9d) display of the television program simultaneous with the display of the EPG. International Application No. PCT/US95/11173 (International Publication No. WO 96/07270), the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein for all purposes, illustrates such an improvement.
An EPG receives program information and ancillary information from data encoded onto scan lines of the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) of the television signals generated by stations within a data distribution network. The VBI data can be received by a television or a set-top box (STB) equipped to receive the VBI data. Hereinafter, TV/STB represents either a television and/or a set-top box.
In some environments, VBI data may not be available. The G-link cartridge is external to a TV/STB and enables a demonstration of an EPG in an environment where VBI data is not available. Although an EPG may have an internal demonstration mode, which shows sample screens of product features with simulated data, the internal demonstration mode is limited. Tight memory constraints within televisions limits the extent of an internal demonstration mode. Thus, an external demonstration cartridge, i.e., G-link cartridge, can provide an expanded demonstration of EPG features.
A system for reprogramming a consumer electronic device includes a consumer electronic device (CED) having a CED processor and a CED memory and a CED serial port connected to the processor, the memory storing CED processor instructions and CED data. The system also includes a download module having a download processor and a download memory and a download serial port connected to the download processor. The CED processor periodically applies a signal to the CED serial port. When the download serial port is connected to the CED serial port to make a serial connection and the download processor receives one of the periodic signals from the CED processor, the download processor initiates the download of one or more of download instructions and download data from the download memory to the CED memory over the serial connection. The consumer electronic device can be any consumer electronic device, but usually is a video device, such a television, video recorder, satellite receiver, hard disk video recorder, television set top box of cable box. The download instructions or data may be a demo program or demo data which allow the consumer electronic device to operate in a demonstration mode using the downloaded instructions and/or data. One such demonstration modes demonstrates an interactive electronic program guide, The downloaded instructions and/or data may be downloaded using one or more bootstrap stages which provide the consumer electronic device with technique to download and utilize a final patch load of instructions and/or data.